Happy Easter! But Where's Passover This Year?

An anticipated Happy Easter to all.

The last two years, Easter and Passover have coincided. Not this year. Passover waits until later in April. 

Whichever you celebrate, extended best wishes.

How we approach these special sacred celebrations combines tradition, community, but also individual circumstance. In a time when markets are clearly pumped up by the money manipulations of the Federal Reserve, and the economy is pumped by outrageously excessive government spending (super-pumped because it's an election year), many of us now have encountered tough economic times. 

While individual circumstances typically vary, we all share in inflation's stamp on our food and gas prices. And if times aren't exactly "tough," unless things change for the better and inflation goes away, we're in for a long strangle. 

As for all the politics of inflation spewed by the Fed Chairman and the government, we would be wise to ignore them. They'll keep telling us all is OK no matter the facts.

But even if you're going through a particularly difficult or stressful time, I suspect most of us will, observe the holiday. For those of us in the financial business, markets close on Good Friday (a long, venerable tradition). So most of us have signed off from our ordinary lives this week to begin our respective holiday celebrations. 

Now that we have a few moments to think beyond our daily labor and chores, let's again share (as we did last year) these thoughts of Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, as published on myjewishlearning.com. He attempts to point out the similarities between Passover and Easter, along with the differences. This particularly caught my attention: “Both festivals emphasize history and hope.”

Too many of our children have been educated without a reasonable knowledge of history. I suspect one reason for this may be a view that history contains many incidents of conflict between groups of people - ethnic, racial, national, etc. But here the Rabbi’s words show us how history can also connect us. In that connection lies the hope.

For as many instances of differences and conflict, we find examples of what we share in common. Rather than ignore history, perhaps we should simply learn to respect our differences and focus more on what unites us as people who share a common Creator. 

Rabbi Schorsch appears to be a man who has decided to do just that.

"If Passover is largely about Egypt, Easter is largely about Passover. Its historical setting is Jerusalem at Passover, the Last Supper could well have been an embryonic seder, and Jesus is fated to become the paschal lamb. Indeed, the new Catechism of the Catholic Church calls Easter “The Christian Passover” (no. 1170) and speaks of the “Paschal mystery of Christ’s cross” (no. 57). The good news is that the death of one has the capacity to save many. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate affirmation of life or in the words of the Byzantine liturgy:   

Christ is risen from the dead!

Dying, he conquered death;

To the dead, he has given life (no. 638).

 Finally, because the message of both festivals is so central to the belief system of each faith community, it interlaces the liturgy year round. In the Haggadah we read that Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah was already advanced in years before he fathomed that the exodus from Egypt should be recalled by every Jew twice daily, in the evening as well as in the morning. That is the reason for the addition at the third paragraph of the Shema [a prayer said twice daily] in which this bedrock fact is affirmed. God’s compassion obliges us to sanctify our lives. 

Correspondingly, for Catholics and many Protestants the weekly sacrament of communion, reenacting the last supper, turns God’s saving grace into a lived reality."

Happy Easter!